Enjoy reading this
sample online Tip:
Flattery for Self Development
by Arman Darini, Ph.D.
May 29, 2006
“Flattery is telling the other person
precisely what he thinks about himself," - Dale Carnegie.
The path of personal growth has three stations that are
visited repeatedly on a spiral path from now to your
eventual full self-fulfillment. Self-awareness to understand
who you are right now. Self-design to figure out who you
want to become. Self-transformation to take you from where
you are to where you want to be. Each station is essential
and requires its own approach.
In the previous article I described an effective tool for
self-awareness and self-transformation - your personal
boundaries. How to change them and what effect that would
have on your identity and your health. Today I continue with
another simple way to understand your self and the selves of
others - compliments.
Do you enjoy being complimented or do you feel self
conscious when someone applauds your talents, your identity,
your actions: "You are a wonderful speaker!" "You are
beautiful!" "You can make really good jokes!" There are
three ways to handle a compliment - acceptance, rejection,
redirection. Most people do not know how to accept a
compliment, instead they reject or redirect it. Which is
unfortunate because sincere compliments add to your cache of
positive examples, and you can rely on them later to support
empowering beliefs about your self. Many people will shy
away from a compliment by claiming modesty. Often behind
modesty hides insecurity. Let's look closer at the three
ways to handle a compliment.
You accept a compliment when you reply with a "Yes",
"Thank you", a smile or a nod. On the inside it feels like
the compliment is going in, that you have an internal
agreement. You reject a compliment when you reply "It's
nothing", "No big deal", give a counterexample, wave your
hand to the side or over the shoulder to send the compliment
packing. On the inside it feels like the compliment was
brushed aside, that it has little to do with who you are.
You redirect a compliment when in the response you change
its meaning. To understand this a little better, I will use
a simple four way classification of the meaning of
compliments and responses: behavior, identity, environment
and emotional state. For example, when I say: "You are
eloquent," that's a compliment about your identity. If you
reply with: "I did speak well," - that's about your
behavior. "Thank you, I am eloquent," - that's about your
identity "I had great notes," - that's about the
environment. "I was feeling energized," - that's about your
emotional state.
So when you accept a compliment, your response keeps the
original meaning by matching the class, and when you
redirect it, your response changes the meaning by
mismatching the class. A particularly frequent redirect is
to respond to a compliment about identity with a comment
about behavior or emotional state. I call such redirects
"downshifting", because your identity includes your
behaviors and your emotional states. It is much more
empowering to know that you are smart, then to know that you
simply passed an exam or that you just felt smart for half
an hour.
"Upshifting" is also possible, when a compliment about
behavior, environment or emotional state generates response
about identity, e.g. "You finished the exam first," - "Yes,
I am smart." These happen occasionally with self-assured and
confident people.
Master how to accept compliments - they are your gifts
for building empowering beliefs. It is healthy to accept a
compliment at its face value by matching the class. To do
that simply listen to the compliment, acknowledge it with a
"Thank you," and imagine the compliment going inside the
hidden power cache of your mind.
Sincerely complimenting people not only gives you a
chance to help them feel good, but also enables you to
easily conversationally read them. By noticing where they
downshift or upshift you will know precisely what they think
about themselves.
Compliments are one simple way that language can deeply
influence who you are. An even more powerful way to
literally change perceived reality is with presuppositions.
In the next article I will delve into the why and how of
presuppositions, that are also often called frames.
